


like knives under my skin

by Onesmartcookie78



Category: Call of Cthulhu (Roleplaying Game), Cthulhu Mythos - Fandom, Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Original Work
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Tragedy, Arkham City (Call of Cthulhu), Canon-Typical Violence, Cthulhu Mythos, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Female Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Lawyers, Losing sanity, Male-Female Friendship, Near Death Experiences, POV First Person, POV Original Female Character, Psychological Horror, Sister-Sister Relationship, Tragedy, Violence, unwilling murderer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:48:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26793901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onesmartcookie78/pseuds/Onesmartcookie78
Summary: After her second encounter with the supernatural, Dot has to confront the fact that she's killed people so that she might live.A novelization of a Call of Cthulhu campaign I've been participating in.
Kudos: 2





	like knives under my skin

We sit in the car in silence. It’s hard to know what to say, how to say it. Should we be grateful that we escaped with our lives? Fearful that we’d just seen another…another _monster?_ Sad because we’d had to kill to get here in the first place?

To my right, Billy clutches his bleeding wound. Nadia is squeezed between my sister and I, half on top of us both, and she obstructs my view of Elaine. She fiddles with her fingers while Elaine appears to be looking out the window.

Jeff coughs in the front seat, but Emily…Emily’s kind of been the rock. Steady, so sure of herself, ferrying us to dangerous locations to do even more dangerous things, always leading the search for the truth. She looks unaffected as she stares out the windshield, keeping her gaze fixed firmly on the road. But those hands…they’d held a gun only a few minutes prior, shot to keep us safe, to keep _me_ safe. Killing from a distance was one thing, but I—I had—

I look down at my hands, seeing sticky red fluid still coating them despite my best efforts. No one had had a rag and there hadn’t been a sink available, so I’d settled for wiping the excess blood off on my clothes. The dark colored pants I’m wearing had absorbed it, betraying no signs of its existence, almost like it had never happened. But it _had_ , and the evidence lies in the small patch of flesh between my fingers, in the slowly darkening liquid lying in wait under my fingernails, _on the kitchen knife resting flat on my thigh_.

And what it had been like to use it. To feel flesh rend at my behest, muscle and sinew and skin exposed for all to see. It had been so damn _simple,_ too, his skin cleaving with the ease of softened butter. And then, he’d fallen to the ground, dead, a red line slashed across his throat and more blood— _so much blood now_ —gushing from the slit bisecting his neck from one end to another, like some horrible parody of a piñata, only the prize is something more morbid, more offal. And that was it. He was dead.

It plays on repeat when I close my eyes.

But I don’t mention it to anyone.

When I get back to my dorm room, I scramble to the kitchen where I scrub furiously at my hands, making sure to get that little patch of flesh between my fingers and the now-fully-darkened liquid under my fingernails. The blood is the color of rust and it flakes off at the slightest touch. I wonder how much of it has chipped off my fingers between exiting the car and making it to the sink. The thought makes me nauseous. I close my eyes to try and ease the feeling, but all I can see is that _man,_ and without warning, I’m violently ill in the sink. I choke on my vomit, coughing and hacking out half-digested chunks of whatever I’d ate last—what had it been, roast and potatoes and corn?—before turning on the tap to wash it all down the drain. Then, I swish out my mouth.

That done, I lean heavily on the counter, feeling weak and wan. What am I supposed to do now? How am I supposed to move on from that? I swipe a hand over my forehead and then my mouth, wiping away the cold sweat that has formed there.

Fuck. _Fuck._

I reach for the bottle of vodka I keep in my ice box.

Fuck indeed.

The sight of that knife taunts me. Ever since we got home, it’s been there, staring back at me, except that it can’t because it’s an inanimate object. I can’t bring myself to clean it up, can’t bring myself to look at it most of the time, but I can feel it there; it’s like a prickle on the back of my neck. I catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye every time I enter my kitchen, where it rests in its place of honor on my counter-top, unwashed.

But every time I see it, I feel nauseous all over again and I’m transported back to _that_ night, rivulets of warm blood pouring from that wound—a wound that _I’d made_. My skin crawls like something is wiggling around underneath it, my own blood dying to be set free, and I scratch, and I scratch, and I scratch until red lines ooze with the stuff, until there’s skin and blood under my nails, until the image _goes. Away._

After, I sit there and think about what I’ve done as I clean myself up. No _sane_ person does this to themself. But I’m trying. I’m struggling to remain it, to remain _sane_. To appear _normal._

It gets to the point where I can’t see a knife without losing the contents of my stomach, whether it be in my apartment or when Elaine and I go out to eat. It’s awkward when I have to explain that I’ve just emptied my stomach over a damn butter knife. Elaine takes to requesting that they refrain from setting the table with any sort of knife whenever we go out. As a result, hosts and waiters alike cast us queer looks, like we’ve done something prohibitively strange, but it’s better than a repeat of the last time.

Elaine reassures me that it’s normal. _Trauma._ That’s what she calls it. Psychological trauma. She, herself, is afraid of any light source that isn’t the sun. Going out after dark has become extremely uncomfortable for her, and she tries to limit herself to staying locked—mostly safely—indoors when night hits.

Even Emily, brave Emily who had seemed so unaffected, confesses once or twice that she feels _something_. I think she’s loathe to admit it though, because it brings her back down to our level—to _my_ level—and she’s no longer this impenetrable and indomitable force of will on two legs walking. Instead she’s human. She’s afraid. She doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t have the answers on how we’re supposed to cope, just like me. But every time I talk to her, she says she’s okay.

_But I know we’re not._

I finally snap one morning when I’m getting ready for class. I’m making eggs and humming to myself when I turn to get a drink of water from the sink. And then, it happens; I catch sight of it in my peripheral vision. I turn, _feeling its presence_ , and the knife is there, _taunting me_ , gleaming silver winking at me under all that _brown_ , and I just can’t—

I drop the glass with a sharp yell. “WHY?” I shout at nothing and nobody. “WHY?”

I get rid of every knife I own.

But I can’t bring myself to get rid of _that_ knife.

I wrap it up in a towel and shove it in my purse. Out of sight, out of mind.

I throw myself headfirst into studying then, and not what I’m supposed to be studying. It happens slowly and then all at once, like pouring water from a pot. Once I start, I can’t stop, until suddenly my every waking hour is spent scouring papers for incidents that could be perceived as supernatural. I find out that there’s an occult store in the underbelly of the city, hidden away from prying eyes and only meant for the truly devoted. There are books on rituals, on ceremonies, on what offerings you need and how to use them, on monsters and magical maladies. A sacrificial knife, spells, what to do with a goat’s head—it’s all in there. Frankly, I’m sure that the majority of what I read is nonsense, but it’s just a supplement to what I find in the papers, and oh do I find things in the papers. Reports on strange animal sightings and objects in space, homeless people going missing, minor pop-ups of that mysterious black substance that we’d found on our last misadventure. Arkham has strange happenings in spades, and that’s not even accounting for the documents I dig up on the psychiatric hospital which lies on the outskirts of town.

Because of my obsession, I spend very little time on schoolwork. I’m so engrossed in my studies that I almost miss one of my exams. I’m lucky that my grades in previous semesters lend me a sort of safety net from which I’m allowed to nearly fail almost all my exams and yet still pass my classes. The only class I do well in is ethics, and that’s only because I’ve recently learned just how much the ends justify the means.

Once we’ve graduated, Elaine manages to pull me from my crippling addiction long enough to do another search for our parents. I’m reluctantly excited for what we might find; Elaine is certain—has always _been_ certain—that something supernatural had happened to them, but that they were still alive, and I’ve always been more skeptical. It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve actually considered the idea that Mom could be out there, somewhere. Maybe she’s safe, maybe she lives in fear, maybe she drinks herself into a drunken stupor each night like I do, but she’s out there. I believe it now. I _have_ to believe it.

But our search turns up nothing. Like smoke, they’ve vanished without a trace, sand slipping through our fingers, crumbling, crumbling, _crumbling, I’m crumbling._

I open a law firm because I’m supposed to. Because it’s _expected_ of me. Because that’s what someone would do if they were in my position and they were really fine. I work out of my apartment because it’s easier, because it’s cheaper; I buy a nice desk that I can’t afford and set up shop in my sitting room because that’s what I’m supposed to do. It takes me two days to arrange the furniture to my liking, but I refuse any help. I set up the desk so that I’m facing the door with two armchairs across from it. The sofa rests, neglected, in the back corner, along with a bunch of empty liquor bottles, crumpled up sweaters, and what has to be at least fifty pages of notebook paper torn to shreds from when I’d tried to write everything down, to _explain_ what had happened, _to try and make myself feel better._

_But it hadn’t worked._

And so, I work as a lawyer instead.

Mostly, I do pro bono work, taking very small payments for cases that aren’t worth it. Because _I’m_ not worth it. I’m a barely functioning alcoholic who’s addicted to smoking and petrified of knives. There’s no way that I deserve to be rolling in cash. I _killed_ someone, for Christ’s sake and yet here I am, playing lawyer, making sure Mary’s neighbor isn’t taking apples from her tree even though the tree overhangs into his yard. It’s almost comical, it’s so mundane. But in a way, it helps me feel better. To be part of something so innocuous, to be helping _justice_ , to be correcting some wrongs in the world.

It feels right.

It gives me more purpose than my endless research, at any rate.

Once or twice, Nadia stops by to see me in my office. She always stops in between shifts at the hospital, looking harried and like she’d rather be anywhere else. The first time I’d made the mistake of wearing a sleeveless dress when she’d come to visit, wanting to look nice, but she’d been horrified by the scratches I’d gouged into my flesh. She’d insisted on cleaning them and treating them and wrapping them up. After that, I’d shifted my entire wardrobe around to accommodate her and others, wearing only long-sleeved shirts or a jacket to hide the cause of my shame from sight.

Not too long after I open the law firm, Elaine moves. Says she’s gotta get out of here. Too many bad memories. I envy her for being able to do so, for being able to get out of here.

Because I can’t. Can’t bring myself to do _anything_ some days, even my research. Can’t even bring myself to get out off the couch to go buy some goddamned cigarettes when I’ve finally exhausted my pack. I never used to smoke—Elaine wouldn’t let me—but there’s a sort of monotony to it, a sort of peace in every conscious inhale and exhale. It makes me feel alive. Even when I wish I were dead.

I drink more heavily now, too. Before, I could have a few vodka tonics and then I’d be done for the night. Now, whenever I go down to the bar across the street, they have a bottle of bourbon waiting for me. I drink the whole thing over the course of a night, go through a whole pack of smokes, and then— _only then_ —do I start on my now cold soup and bread, not a knife in sight.

I keep in contact with her, with Elaine. She calls me once a week (never the other way around, if anyone wants to reach me, they can call _me_ ) and we talk about everything and nothing; small talk, meaningless conversation about her cute new neighbor, how her residency is going, the cat she sees every day when she walks home. Sometimes, _sometimes,_ she tries to get deeper. Tries to talk to me about what had happened, asks if I’m seeing anyone, _a therapist_ , to help. I’m always quick to shut her down, but her nagging grates on me. I know she’s suggesting it because she cares, because I’m _hurting_ and she doesn’t know how to help, but it makes me angry.

Angry enough that one day, in the middle of our conversation, I throw the receiver across the room, the cord dragging the box with it, until it’s lying in a broken heap of phone guts, wires askew and metal dented and mangled. She hadn’t even said anything to trigger me, hadn’t even brought up therapy or what had happened that night, but I could feel her _judging_ me, sense her on the other side of the line, so righteous, pitying me.

And that was that.

It costs me a pretty penny to fix it, but it’s worth it so that I can talk to Elaine and Emily and Jeff and Virginia and even occasionally Billy. The week I go without a phone before it can be repaired is torturous. I hadn’t realized until then how much I _relied_ on those weekly chats with my sister, on those late-night monthly phone calls with Emily, on Virginia’s gossip and Jeff’s griping and Billy’s bitching.

Because I’m lonely.

Despite being closer to anyone than I’ve ever been before, despite having _acquaintances who had gone through the same experiences as me and so I call them friends as a result,_ I felt lonelier than I ever had before.


End file.
